By Marissa SteplerMost of us listen to music frequently in our lives: on the radio, at concerts, and even in coffee shops. Although music has a much richer sound than the spoken word, it has always been thought to be perceived the same way that we perceive other noises. But what if a part of the brain was dedicated solely to the perception and processing of musical stimuli - a “musical cortex”? According to researchers at MIT, the “musical cortex,” or something like it, may actually exist. Dr. Josh McDermott and other scientists at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT believe that they have found a discrete population of neurons in the auditory cortex that respond solely to musical sounds. McDermott’s team used functional MRI (fMRI) imaging in a new way, using the image data to identify particular groups of neurons that responded to different stimuli. The researchers found six different populations of neurons that respond to unique types of sounds, one of which was music. One of the other populations they identified was responsive to speech and did not overlap with the music population, suggesting that music and speech are processed in different places and probably in different ways by the brain. But if all musical sounds are processed by the same set of neurons, how do we distinguish between Taylor Swift and Beethoven? There is still a lot that is unknown about how these music-specific neurons work, but McDermott and his team think that different subgroups of “music neurons” may respond to musical elements like rhythm and melody. It is also possible that these neurons may function differently in each individual, depending on their childhood exposure to music and musical training (or lack thereof).
So maybe part of the reason we as humans like music so much is because our brains are specially equipped to listen to it. As we learn more about the way the brain processes music, we may gain insight not only into the higher functioning of the auditory cortex, but also about the way that our brains have adapted to the prevalence of music as a dominant part of our culture. Sources: [1] http://news.mit.edu/2015/neural-population-music-brain-1216 [2] http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(15)01071-5
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AuthorsThe authors of these blog posts are staff writers of The Triple Helix at Georgetown University. Archives
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